Jill DuffyAdobe Color LavaPhotoshop users can now put their iPad to use as a palette to interactively blend colors as if they were paint and save them to swatches to use in Photoshop. Adobe Color Lava could be more responsive, but still it's a good companion to the leading digital art software package.

Photoshop users can now put their iPad to use as a palette to interactively blend colors as if they were paint and save them to swatches to use in Photoshop. Adobe Color Lava could be more responsive, but still it's a good companion to the leading digital art software package.

Adobe Color Lava turns your iPad into a palette to mix digital colors as if they were paint. You can save color schemes, which hold up to five unique swatches, as well as name them and share them via email. Color Lava makes designing color schemes a little more entertaining, and gives Photoshop CS5 (5 stars, $430) users a handy tool for the iPad. Color Lava and two other new apps (Adobe Nav and Eazel) announced at the same time are Adobe's first foray into app-based plug-ins for Photoshop, and I for one am excited to see more. Note that I got advance code to test; none of the apps are available in the App Store yetAdobe expects them to release in May.

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Adobe Color Lava Interface
The interface is roughly divided into thirds, with the largest section at the center to act as your mixing area. To the left are two wheels of paints that you can swap between by selecting the center of the wheel. The first has blue, purple, red, orange, yellow, and green; the second wheel contains white, black, and several shades of gray. Above the color picker is a well of water to clean your "brush" or finger of its paint. Touching the water is entrancing, as it ripples and shimmies when agitated. To the right are a strip of five boxes where you can save the colors you create.

Tap any color twice, and three slider controls will appear to let you change the hue, saturation, and brightness (HSB) levels.

There are few other buttons, which keeps the interface very simple. Along the very bottom of the screen, a "NEW" button pulls up a clean canvas. The icon that lets you pull up all the saved color themes you've created is a grid of squares. And a "PS" button connects the iPad app to Photoshop CS5 running on your desktop or laptop to give you access to your custom colors schemes.

When you look through your saved color schemes, you can double tap to edit them, share them, or find more information, such as the colors' RGB values, HSB values, HTML HEX number, and the date the color profiles were created.

Connecting Lava to Photoshop
Lava's real purpose comes to light when you connect it to Photoshop (CS5.1 and later). Establishing a connection is much like connecting a Bluetooth device to your computer. In Photoshop under the Edit menu is an option for Remote Connections. Create a name and password, and select "Enable Remote Connections." Then on the iPad, touch the PS icon in the lower right side of the screen, and the program will walk you through the setup.

Once you're connected, you can put into play all the color swatches you created in Color Lava. Tapping an individual swatch from the iPad sets it as the foreground color in Photoshop's Color panel. Select an entire color theme, and the five selections will appear in the Color panel

Color Coordination
Color Lava sometimes reacts a bit slowly. I occasionally experienced a lag between when I gestured to swirl colors and when they blended. But for a tiny app running on a mobile device, the fluidity still exceeded my expectations. The only other aspect that threw me off was the function of the water well. Upon starting up the app for the first time, I expected the water to change the viscosity of the paint, thereby lightening the saturation level and making the colors run together more easily. But the water's only function is to clear the color from your finger (and to act as eye candy when it ripples).

Busy designers and artists will be happy to play with this mobile app that gives them a playful and interactive way to mix colors and try out new themes when they're away from their desks. For about $3, Adobe Color Lava for the iPad is attractively priced and is a fun companion for Adobe Photoshop. It will be available in May.

Adobe Color Lava

Bottom Line: Photoshop users can now put their iPad to use as a palette to interactively blend colors as if they were paint and save them to swatches to use in Photoshop. Adobe Color Lava could be more responsive, but still it's a good companion to the leading digital art software package.

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About the Author

Jill Duffy is a contributing editor, specializing in productivity apps and software, as well as technologies for health and fitness. She writes the weekly Get Organized column, with tips on how to lead a better digital life. Her first book, Get Organized: How to Clean Up Your Messy Digital Life is available for Kindle, iPad, and other digital forma... See Full Bio

Adobe Color Lava

Adobe Color Lava

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